Is Geoffrey Ittleman Lawyering Or Threatening? We’re Unclear What He Wants.
BY: ANDREW COLTON | Editor and Publisher
BOCA RATON, FL (BocaNewsNow.com) (Copyright © 2023 MetroDesk Media, LLC) — Being threatened with legal — or other — action is all part of journalism in 2023. But very rarely does a lawyer use the “because I said so” argument. The lawyer representing Woodfield Hunt Club in a lawsuit against the driver of a car who allegedly crashed into the Woodfield sign, however, is the exception to the rule. Geoffrey Ittleman, an attorney in Fort Lauderdale, spent part of the afternoon proving this to be true.
We published an article back in February of 2023 about Woodfield Hunt suing a mom and her daughter after the daughter allegedly crashed into the sign on Yamato Road. The lawsuit was filed by Geoffrey Ittleman. He filed the suit in Palm Beach County Circuit Court. He claimed in the suit that Woodfield Hunt sustained $338,000 in damage. You can read the complete lawsuit here. This is from the original complaint written by Ittleman:
“On October 18, 2022, Dorothea was operating the vehicle owned by her mother, Nancy. The vehicle is a luxury SUV. It is more particularly identified as a 2022 Black Volvo XC60 (hereinafter “the vehicle”) located in Palm Beach County, Florida. Dorothea had two separate passengers in the vehicle with her at that time.
Dorothea was traveling on Yamato Road and was heading west and traveling towards Jog Road. Dorothea intended on making a left hand turn upon reaching the intersection of Yamato Road and Jog Road. The traffic light in the intersection turned yellow at the time that Dorothea drove up to the intersection. Rather than wait on Yamato Road and enter the intersection when the traffic light turned green, Dorothea decided to accelerate her mother’s luxury SUV and attempted to cross through the intersection under the yellow traffic signal at a high rate of speed.
Dorothea was unable to maintain control of the vehicle. The vehicle left the roadway and crossed the curb and the sidewalk of the southwest corner of the intersection as it traveled in the southwestern direction. It proceeded to strike a pedestrian crosswalk sign and then proceeded to strike the plaintiff association’s signage. The impact resulted in damages to not only the signage but also ensuing, resulting damages to the fencing, the veneer covering the paneling and the perimeter wall surrounding the plaintiff association…”
So you can imagine our surprise to receive an email from Ittleman on Wednesday afternoon, more than six months after our article initially appeared. Here’s what he wrote:
“Please be advised that record counsel in the attached lawsuit (for the plaintiff and the defendants) are writing to advise the Boca News that your articles in the attached regarding the occurrence had a number of published inaccuracies and, therefore, the parties would ask that the Boca News remove both the February 10, 2023 and March 6, 2023 articles from the public domain, forthwith.”
We asked for clarification about what was wrong — a normal journalistic request. We would like a specific list of our inaccuracies so that we could research and correct them, if needed. That led to this response from Mr. Ittleman, who we again note is the original author of the original lawsuit.
“Both our office and counsel for the defendant agree that your articles had various published inaccuracies. The inaccuracies pertained to our office, Woodfield Hunt Club, the driver and her family, the police report, the estimate attached to the complaint, and various other inconsistencies. As you know, it is not our job to issue articles to the Boca News and therefore your offer below is rejected. We are informing you that the article that you ran was done without any sort of communication with our office. No questions from the Boca News were asked of me or Ms. White prior to the article being circulated and therefore it was riddled with errors and should therefore be removed from the internet. On behalf of Woodfield Hunt Club, the driver, her family and their insurance carrier, we are asking you for your intentions, in writing, and we will not engage in further back and forth communications with you or the Boca News.”
As we explained to Mr. Ittleman, he’s the one who filed the complaint. We have no obligation to reach out to him — his official statement is contained in multiple pages of a public court filing. Here’s our response:
“To be clear: we are providing you the opportunity to list the specific concerns that you have. Clearly, none are pressing. You certainly wouldn’t have waited six months to contact BocaNewsNow.com had something been egregiously incorrect in our reporting of a lawsuit that you filed. It is certainly your choice to not respond, just as it is our choice to publish all communication received from your office. Journalistically, we let court documents speak for themselves. We are under no obligation to contact you once you file public documents in the court system. If you have amended court filings that have not yet been processed by the Clerk, please provide those documents to us and we will update our reporting as appropriate.”
We didn’t hear back after that response. It appears the case may have been settled, based on additional public records filed with the Palm Beach County Clerk of Courts. We asked Mr. Ittlemen for details of the settlement so that we can accurately report the conclusion. He hasn’t responded. We’ll let you know if he provides facts.
